The Death Toll in Yemen Is Far Worse Than We Thought, It's Time to Act
By Patrick Cockburn, The Independent
02 November 18
The absence of credible figures for the death toll in Yemen until now, has
made it easier for foreign powers to shrug off accusations they are
complicit in a human disaster
One reason Saudi Arabia and its allies are able to avoid a public outcry
over their intervention in the war in Yemen, is that the number of people
killed in the fighting has been vastly understated. The figure is regularly
reported as 10,000 dead in three-and-a-half years, a mysteriously low figure
given the ferocity of the conflict.
Now a count by a non-partisan group has produced a study demonstrating
56,000 people have been killed in Yemen since early 2016. The number is
increasing by more than 2,000 per month as fighting intensifies around the
Red Sea port of Hodeidah. It does not include those dying of malnutrition,
or diseases such as cholera.
"We estimate the number killed to be 56,000 civilians and combatants between
January 2016 and October 2018," says Andrea Carboni, who researches Yemen
for the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), an
independent group formerly associated with the University of Sussex that
studies conflicts and is focusing attention on the real casualty level. He
told me he expects a total of between 70,000 and 80,000 victims, when he
completes research into the casualties, hitherto uncounted, who died between
the start of the Saudi-led intervention in the Yemen civil war, in March
2015, and the end of that year.
The oft-cited figure of 10,000 dead comes from a UN official speaking only
of civilians in early 2017, and has remained static since. This out of date
statistic, drawn from Yemen's patchy and war-damaged health system, has
enabled Saudi Arabia and the UAE - who lead a coalition of states strongly
backed by the US, UK and France - to ignore or downplay the loss of life.
Casualties are rising by the day as Saudi and UAE-directed forces try to cut
off Hodeidah - the last port controlled by the Houthi rebels - from the
capital, Sanaa. Oxfam said this week, a civilian is being killed every three
hours in the fighting, and between 1 August and 15 October, 575 civilians
were killed in the port city, including 136 children and 63 women. An
airstrike on Wednesday killed 16 civilians in a vegetable market in
Hodeidah, and other strikes this month have hit two buses at a Houthi-held
checkpoint, killing 15 civilians, including four children.
Little information about casualties in Yemen reaches the outside world
because Saudi and the UAE make access difficult for foreign journalists and
other impartial witnesses. By contrast to the war in Syria, the American,
British and French governments have no interest in highlighting the
devastation caused in Yemen - they give diplomatic cover to the Saudi
intervention. But their deliberate blindness to the death of so many Yemenis
is starting to attract more negative attention, as a byproduct of the flood
of international criticism of Saudi Arabia in the wake of the premeditated
murder of Jamal Khashoggi - now admitted by Saudi officials - in Istanbul on
2 October.
The absence of credible figures for the death toll in Yemen has made it
easier for foreign powers to shrug off accusations they are complicit in a
human disaster. That is despite frantic appeals from senior UN officials to
the organisation's Security Council to avert a manmade famine which now
threatens 14 million Yemenis - half the population.
The crisis has worsened because of the siege of Hodeidah - with the city a
lifeline for aid and commercial imports - since mid June, a situation that
has forced 570,000 people to flee their homes. UN humanitarian affairs chief
Mark Lowcock warned on 23 October "the immune systems of millions of people
on survival support for years on end are now literally collapsing, making
them - especially the elderly - more likely to succumb to malnutrition,
cholera and other diseases".
Just how many people die because they are weakened by hunger is difficult to
know accurately, because most of the deaths happen at home and are
unrecorded. This is particularly true of Yemen, where half the meagre health
facilities no longer function, and people are often too poor to use those
that do.
Loss of life from fighting should be easier to record and publicise, and the
fact this has not happened in Yemen is a sign of the lack of interest by the
international community in the conflict. Carboni says ACLED has been able to
tally the number of civilians and combatants killed in ground fighting and
bombing by drawing on the Yemeni press and, to a lesser extent,
international media. ACLED has used these sources, after carefully assessing
their credibility, to calculate the number of fatalities. Where figures
differ, the group uses lower estimates and favours the claims of those who
suffered casualties, over those who say they inflicted them.
It is difficult to distinguish between civilian targets that are
deliberately attacked, and non-combatants who died because they were caught
in the crossfire, or were close to a military unit or facility when hit.
A study by Professor Martha Mundy - Strategies of the Coalition in the Yemen
War: Aerial Bombardment and Food War - concludes the Saudi-led bombing
campaign deliberately targeted food production and storage facilities. Some
220 fishing boats have been destroyed on Yemen's Red Sea coast and the fish
catch is down by half.
ACLED began counting casualties after the war was under way, which is why it
is only now researching loss of life in 2015, with its findings due to be
published in January or February.
Carboni adds, the trend is for the number of people being killed to rise.
The monthly total before December 2017 was fewer than 2,000 casualties, but
since then it has always been more than 2,000. Almost all those who died are
Yemenis, though the figures also include 1,000 Sudanese troops killed
fighting on behalf of the Saudi coalition.
The Khashoggi affair has led to greater international focus on the
calamitous war in Yemen, and the role of Saudi Arabia and Crown Prince
Mohammed bin Salman in the conflict. But there is no sign of the US, Britain
or France curtailing military assistance to the kingdom and the UAE, despite
the likelihood the coalition will fail to win a decisive victory.
The true "butcher's bill" in the Yemen war has taken too long to emerge, but
it may help to increase pressure on outside powers to stop the killing.
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